


The Loneliest Number

by TaurusVersant



Category: Gravity Rush
Genre: Gen, Introspections of the one who resides at the peak, room for no other but her
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-26
Updated: 2018-03-26
Packaged: 2019-04-08 10:18:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14103237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TaurusVersant/pseuds/TaurusVersant
Summary: She couldn't understand how she was so much less than the sum of her parts.





	The Loneliest Number

Even knowing they were two halves, her self split in two, she hadn't expected them to be... so much less.

Gade had warned her, said she should not read deeply into the reality where she existed not as one but as two, but she was a creature of curiosity and these two, this Kat and Raven, they intrigued her. So she denied the will of the Creators once again, as she always did – they always tried to control her, never did they succeed – and slipped from the rigid path they’d provided.

A corridor, defined between space and time, constructed between two packs of the same Creators, was opened to her. She was to confront and train her two halves, teach them to draw out the power she had always naturally commanded. That, perhaps, should have been the first warning sign. That her aid was required for so small a thing. But too enraptured was her imagination at what these two must be like, these halves of her, that she ignored her doubts.

Ignored the Creators too.

Her command is gravity and though it took the Creators’ power to open this corridor, her own could manipulate it. So she broke windows into the reality that dual-self dwelled within, and followed the trail of their Guardians – creatures also so much smaller than her own – to witness them.

This is what she saw.

Kat was bubbly, energetic, as curious as she with a heart of gold. Raven was intense, passionate, and sharp as the edge of the finest blade. Traits of hers broken apart into two vessels, distilled into something only faintly recognisable. Two figures who were enough like her to make seeing them a strange experience. She found herself enjoying it less than she'd hoped. 

Kat fell to Hekseville from frozen Eto above. Raven rose from the darkness far beneath. Without the focus point of their Guardians, reaching further back for either was murky. This was enough. She watched.

She saw their first meeting. Her two halves and yet neither saw themselves in the other. Raven turned her back.

Again, after the first chunk of Hekseville was restored, an act she remembered from her first days as well. The two clashed and Raven, far more experienced than Kat, stomped down heavily upon her head. Such violence against oneself, it perturbed her to see. The two were enemies. Her own two halves enemies.

Yet still they used the power they should have so weakly.

She watched them grow. Kat accelerated into her own, catching up to Raven not so much in skill as raw power. The two clashed again and this time Kat did not lose. A draw, balance, as they should be. They fell into the darkness below and rose up again. Faced down the dangers the world threw upon them. And grew closer, just a bit.

Something annoyed her but she knew not what.

It was a lifetime of struggles. She saw them face opponents and fail to secure the absolute victories she had. Cast through time and space once more. A world beyond Hekseville opened up to them. She opened a new window to witness their return.

Here was their defeat. A loss she could not imagine suffering herself. So small. So weak. The only option their Creators, interfering time and time again despite their insistence they were impartial beings, had left was to call the aid of a superior.

Of her.

Kat’s voice called out to her. Raven’s a moment later.

She bound each in gravity, tasked them to overcome it. Struggling under the mantle of her power they would either release their own or be crushed. The thought of harming someone who was, in some manner, herself, did not cross her mind.

If they could not surpass this she would never acknowledge them. That was her decision.

To their credit, they were quick studies.

They were both determined. Both pushed through the challenges she brought against them, Nevi obeying the will of the Guardian she kept. And they both attained the power she had expected them to have. A strange, divided power compared to the fullness she could become, but it would be enough. She could tell such a thing. So she let them go on, return to their place and their time and their reality to fight their battle.

That should have been all.

It should have been all.

They were less than her. So much so it made acknowledging them difficult. She could bring both to bear without a missed step, she knew that in her heart. She should give them no consideration at all. And yet… yet why did she feel they had something she did not? What instinct told her she was losing to them? She didn't know. A creature of curiosity, captured by their natures, she opened the windows once more.

Looked ahead.

Here was their return from this corridor, and with their new power they pulled the Angels down from heaven. The sort of expression of power that should mean nothing. Yet it was such a grand victory for them. How was it that apart they were so small? How was it that as two they were so weak?

Why was it that watching them was so frustrating?

The darkness was rising. They ascended to Eto and Elektricitie fell as lightning upon the city. She watched as that being tore apart the defences of this place. Were her halves so pathetic as to let Hekseville fall after abandoning it? She watched and waited and was almost at her own breaking point when Raven appeared alone. Fought. Did well. But not nearly well enough.

Kat came next and gave everything she could. Brought down Elektricitie. But what came next was no surprise.

The Darkness rose and she watched as Kat struggled against it. Began to lose everything to it. This was a different story to her own. Was this the ignominious end for her two weak halves? She watched.

And the people of Hekseville moved.

She knew the song they sung, the sound of their chorus shaking her heart. She saw Kat express her power, the true form of her power, and throw the Darkness down. Saw her give of herself to banish it once and for all. A singularity.

She remembered forming one in her hands and leaving it in the Darkness to seal that beast. Kat had not been able to do the same. Threw herself instead into the void. The only way.

She watched Raven awaken in the light of a now safe Hekseville and watched as the sensation of knowing Kat was gone wracked her. It was a difficult thing to picture, the feelings coursing through that half, the loss and suffering. She could not imagine losing a half of her self. After all, she was whole.

A year passed by. She'd considered it, once, appearing before Raven, yet known it would do no good. Rather, instead seeing her, Kat but not Kat, would have only hurt. So she did not and watched to see how only half of her would go on.

And then Kat returned.

She didn't understand the feeling she felt seeing them embrace. They were her own self, split in two, and so weak and small. Yet somehow she felt as if they had something she did not. She could stand it no longer.

She would ask them herself.

She is herself and Kat and Raven were her self. When they dreamed she reached out and was there, this world that was a dream facilitating such a meeting with almost capricious ease. Perhaps the abilities of the Creators were little more than appealing to the world’s love of a good story. She did not care.

She stood before each in this dream and intended to demand from them truth. What did they have that she did not? How was it they could be so weak, and yet feel as if they had so much more than she? It frustrated. It infuriated. It consumed her. She needed to know.

Tell her. Please.

Kat embraced her.

I’m sorry, were her words, you had to fight alone.

She shook.

Raven reached out to her.

It’s not fair, she spoke, I know what it is like.

She quaked.

A hand, upon her shoulder, brought her eyes open. Through time and space her thoughts returned, and her reality, her world, greeted her. Gade apologised for being able to maintain the corridor no longer.

The quickness by which she rose to her feet, the expression upon her face, the Creator paled and begged forgiveness quickly. In that other world Raven’s anger had been a gale that tore apart her foes, but hers was a storm that ripped the stars from orbit.

She had never once accepted the Creators’ games and they had learned not to play them with her.

Into the skies over Hekseville she rose, city she had pulled from the darkness alone, and through those skies she drifted. Not to the home she had been given, a gift for her solitary service, but between the houses of the Old District. Down through its depths, past sewers and pipes, to a landing she had never given consideration before. A boarded up place that was never a home here. Empty, lifeless, and alone.

She wondered, for a moment, whether if she stayed there, if she slept there, she would dream of them.

And in dreaming remember what it was like to be loved.

**Author's Note:**

> The Other fascinates me, their story could be so similar, but also so wildly different. I've been wanting to dig into their mental state for a while now. So I finally did. It's a short fic, all things considered, but I like it, so I've posted it. Ideally more Gravity Rush stuff in the future. We'll see.


End file.
